


Amour

by orphan_account



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: 5+1 Fic, And Hella Nervous, Ezio Is Cute, Leonardo Is Just Oblivious, M/M, Nerds in Love, hand holding, neck kisses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2804912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Love is like water. We can fall in it, we can drown it it, but we can’t live without it.” - Unknown.</p><p>A Five plus One fic about all the times Ezio and Leonardo should have been uncomfortable with each other but weren't and the one time that they actually were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Time

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. As you can probably tell I, myself speak very limited Italian but I tried my best.

Firenze.

The first time it happened, both of the men were young, Ezio barely 18 and Leonardo pushing 25 years of age. It was almost one year after the Auditore executions had rocked Firenze.

Ezio knocked thrice in quick succession on the workshop door, the early afternoon sun glinting on the dark wood painted a deep caramel colour. His knuckles were raw and bloody from throwing punches and he was leaning heavily to his left, clutching his bloodied waist line. His blood soaked robes hid a shallow, curved wound that arced from in between his last two ribs all the way down to just below his hip bone. He began to feel the blood in his stubble start to congeal and become sticky. He knew he must have made a frightful sight for and ladies and men who were walking past with horrified looks, but he didn't care.

"Leonardo! Apri la porta! Aiuto mi!" Ezio called to his older friend through the wooden door, wiping a streak of blood from his cheek. He had hoped that Leonardo could help him, as he was quite seriously injured due to a run in with a few very angry guards. It wasn't Ezios' fault at all however.

He heard mumbles and footsteps behind the door while he waited as patiently as he could, given the circumstances. Only one or so minutes after he knocked, the door swung open. Leonardo had his hair tied up and back off of his face in a knot of some sort while he had blue streaks of paint staining his forehead and bare arms. It had always amazed Ezio how, someone who paid so much attention to his appearance and his hygiene, could become so messy while painting. Ezio never asked him though, he simply shared a quiet laugh with Leonardo whenever he mentioned it to the maestro.

"Ezio mio fratello! What can I- Oh my goodness!" The painter exclaimed, rushing forward to wrap an arm around Ezios' upper body when the younger man crumpled forward, straightening him up so he did not collapse on the his front door. Leonardo helped the assassin stumble indoors and out of the bright, hot afternoon sun, "Get inside quickly before the guards see you! All this blood better not be yours and if it is I'm throwing you back out!". They both knew that was a lie.

Both men struggled their way towards a mildly cleared table and Leonardo guided him toward an empty desk. "Ezio Siediti!" the painter barked in a manner most unlike his usual soft tone of voice, worry consuming his voice.

Ezio obeyed the Maestro and sat himself down on the wood, gasping in pain when the action aggravated his wound further. He sat up as straight as he could, shrugging his outer layer off, leaving only his shirt. His legs were bent at a sharp angle under the table, legs perpendicular to his torso. Leonardo began to tidy up around him, making some space for the assassin to sit more comfortably.

"Will you help me, my friend?" Ezio asked the painter, who stared at him as if he were a madman. Ezio looked down at the floorboards, at least mildly embarrassed by what was going on. "I believe I may need stiches and my coin purse was, ahem, bequeathed, from my person".

Leonardo mumbled a quick approval and laughed, walking away into the next room to fetch some alcohol, a needle and a reel of catgut he kept stashed for accidents or when certain, confrontational, teenage assassins came a-calling.

Ezio sat still, or, well, as still as he could manage while he heard Leonardo rummage around through drawers in the adjacent room. The young assassins mind was running a mile a minute, fixating on the tingling running along his side where Leonardo had so carefully held him up. He felt as though those long, clever fingers were still there, a light feather pressure upon his skin. He imagined interlocking his own sword calloused fingers with Leonardo's own, just a small, intimate gesture.

"It is really no problem, Ezio. I will need to inspect the wound however so if you can remove your shirt, I'll get started" Leonardo smiled when he re-entered the room, though it did not reach his eyes. He set the implements down on the table beside the brunets' thigh and he tugged lightly at Ezios' shirt. Leonardo's face was a most peculiar shade of pink during that action and Ezio raised his arms obediently, pulling his robes and shirt off at the same time, baring his muscular, albeit bloodied chest, setting the red stained material down on the desk behind him, gasping softly in pain as the movement caused the wound to reopen, trickles of blood trailing down the defined lines of his lower abdomen. The painter glared at the assassin as he bent down to examine the wound at eye level and he stared up at him, refusing to move with one eyebrow raised high.

As Ezio sat still he began to realise that Leonardo was waiting for an explanation of why he had shown up at his door, covered in blood that was both his own and belonging to a few other guards.

"She was very beautiful, amico mio. Ah, if only she had mentioned her husband had hired a few personal guards to protect the palazzo."

Leonardo laughed heartily at that and he soaked a rag in a liquid that ran clear but obviously wasn't water due to the bitter smell of it. "Ezio, Ezio, you ragazzo! You think yourself a charmer but I don't think there's much else there. Why didn't you ask if she was married? Is it that hard to think?" The painter paused at that, the rag held over the arced slice across tan skin, "Well, in your case-"

" I would guard your tongue if you intended to keep it Maestro" Ezio teased back, eyes glinting with dangerous, the star of an assassin. Leonardo mearly rolled his eyes and picked up the wet rag.

"I jest. I wont lie, this is going to hurt, mio fratello" The painter spoke with a clear, concise tone as he tapped Ezios' knee with a long finger. Ezio spread his legs warily and with no small amount of fear, to accommodate the painter whom stepped between them and pressed the alcohol soaked cloth to his wound.

"Gah! Figlio un cane!" The teen hissed put between clenched teeth, as Leonardo rubbed away blood and sweat from the oozing wound, the alcohol cleaning the torn skin, the tender skin turning from golden to blushed pink. He felt a few tears on his cheeks at the burn and he gripped both hands tight to the table. His nails tore painfully along the wood, scratching shaving under his jagged nails. Something warm touched along his right hand and pried it from the table, engulfing it in softness. Ezio looked down at his hand in shock, releasing the table with a shocked look.

Leonardo's hand was enveloped in his own, long artists fingers entwined in his calloused ones. His thumb traced gentle sweep across the back of the assassin's knuckles and it succeeded in distracting him from the pain of the alcohol for a time he could not remember.

And if Ezio spent the entire time with a raging blush across his cheeks, well then. 

No one had to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My need for Leo with a messy bun was greater than my need for life.


	2. The Second Time.

To Ezio, staying in Leonardo's workshop with him overnight had grown to be somewhat of a frequent occurrence. It usually came to pass because the two men had drunk a bit too much vino and Leonardo still had enough sense left to guide Ezio to the small bed in the corner of the room where he did most of his work rather than leave the assassin to wander his way to the nearest inn.

Those nights increased in frequency in the long weeks after the night when Ezio had fallen in Leo's door bloodied and broken. It happened so often in fact that Ezio would spend almost every free night he had with Leonardo, laughing alongside him and struggling to remember Leonardo's smile as he saw it while intoxicated, the flash of teeth behind plush pink lips that were chapped and nervously-bitten when the painter became stressed or worried.

Some nights however, Ezio would stay for another reason.

He would slip in through the half opened window that was overlooking the courtyard, silent in the dark, slinking through the shadows in a pure hunters prowl to avoid making any noise that would alert any unsavoury characters outside the workshop. The assassin would not be injured, bleeding or bloodied only scared, sorrowful and bleary-eyed, stirred from his slumber by faces of the dead. Haunted by the death throes of those who had died by his blade and those who had not.

It was mostly dreams of those whose death he could not prevent. Like his father and brothers.

He would stumble into Leonardo's main room where the blond was usually absorbed in a commission or a personal sketch he never let Ezio view. He smiled through the tears he refused to let fall at the sheer determination on the other mans face. His hair was impeccably maintained as usual although tonight he chose to work with darker paints and it showed. He had streaks of red and black covering his hands and his face and Ezio would never had admitted how attracted to Leonardo he was in those moments.

"L-Leonardo" He called hoarsely, voice sob torn and gravely while his cheeks had almost invisible tear tracks on them, white lines across young tan flesh. He wracked his hands together, marred with tiny scratches from restless sleep. Sometimes he couldn't even remember how he had reached the workshop in the first place, memories hazy and blank, simply remembering the kind blue eyes of his closest friend and how Ezio just knew he could help him. He did not know how, he just knew.

The painter looked up without surprise and a look of sympathy covering his face. He was too used to the occurrence to be shocked at Ezio's appearances well after midnight. He placed down his palate and paintbrush on the side crate adjacent to the hefty canvas that showed a beautiful albeit half finished portrait of a noble lady, obviously with some foreign descent due to her luscious caramel skin that contrasted hauntingly with sky blue eyes and a devilish grin that bared her teeth like a wildcat.

He strode gracefully, as no other word could describe the man's leisurely gait, toward the assassin and guided him to the tucked up bed in the corner where he had spent many nights himself. When he was too tired to haul himself into the next room. His voice was soothing, calm. Laced with compassion for the younger man.

Leonardo was clever enough to know he could not cure his friend's distress completely, merely lessen it, but he gave what he could. Mumbled nonsense was what he poured into the other mans ear, compliments, sympathies and ramblings about his work to distract the man, injecting small doses of humour to try to get the man to smile. He called every mumbled laugh, chuckle or small smile curling against his skin a victory

At some point in the night his arm was wound around his friend shoulders, hugging him to his chest tightly, though if you asked both men would swear it was the other who initiated it. The touch of his friends heartbeat against his arm was an intimate feeling that he adored. Ezio's head was resting against the boney shoulder of the painter, temple caressing the thin skin over the bone, his own arm around Leos waist as they sat on the bed, backs to the wall.

They both knew they should not have been in such an embrace as such activities were actively frowned upon between men. Men who were suspected of sodomy were often executed publically as it conflicted with the teachings of the Jesus and The Bible, but neither man had been one who let his life be guided by religion. Ezio craved the contact, the intimacy and the love of a friend and Leonardo was more than willing to provide what he could give.

"Grazie" Ezio sighed into the crook of Leonardos' neck, teetering on the cusp of sleep and wakefulness, lips brushing the skin like oil over canvas. The painter mumbled a response under his breath, eyes locked on the mans serene face, tucked so gently into his neck. The assassin was a panther, a jaguar, a wildcat when he fought, fangs bared and vicious, but now he looked like the sleepy domestic cat that prowled the street behind the workshop, so calm and peaceful.

There was brief pressure against his neck, gentle, fleeting, like the fluttering kiss of a butterflies wings, unbelievable. It lasted all but a moment before Ezio fell into the clutches of sleep, his face smoothing over and breath deeping to gentle rasps. Ezio's kiss was all that consumed Leonardo's mind. It was gentle in a way the man never was. It was sensual, like a moment shared between lovers yet so beautiful that he wanted to grasp the brunet's chin and capture those plush lips in a searing kiss, watch those amber eyes fly open and then flutter shut. To feel his pulse beat hard under his fingertips.

Leonardo smiled then stood, shifted the man till he lay upon his side atop the blankets in his under clothes, his heavy assassin robes abandoned in a pile once he climbed in the window in the first place. He pressed a kiss to his hair then moved away. He pulled out an empty canvas and some black charcoal with which to sketch and he settled across from the sleeping predator.

He could see the shifting muscle of Ezios abdomen and forearms as he moved minutely in sleep, a tiny smile on his face. His shirt was ridden up a small bit, just enough to display the prominent hipbones hidden under lush skin. His hair was unruly in a way that could only be described as cute. God, was he only exquisite.

Leonardo smiled, touched his neck once with a finger and began to sketch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys I know its been long bit I'm gonna yolo it and update now for like, the four people who probably like this trash.


End file.
